The church, the clubs and their pokies

The Catholic church and Catholic clubs are at odds over gambling reforms. The church backs them but the clubs oppose them, insisting they don’t profit from problem gamblers. Wendy Carlisleinvestigates the ‘Catholic casinos’.

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Transcript

Wendy Carlisle: Now that poker machine reform is dead in the water, after a highly successful campaign by Clubs Australia, the clubs are promoting their own strategies to deal with problem gambling.

Hello, I’m Wendy Carlisle and this is Background Briefing.

Amongst the most successful clubs when it comes to gambling revenue are the half dozen Catholic Clubs in Sydney. Between them, they have over 1700 poker machines pulling in more than $150-million each year. But with the best available research suggesting that 40 per cent of that is coming from problem gamblers it’s hardly surprising that the main Catholic welfare group is unhappy.

(To Paul O’Callaghan) Do Catholic Clubs face a particular moral challenge here by virtue of them being, if you like, associated with the church?

Paul O’Callaghan: A business model that depends on, essentially, people losing money and getting themselves into very deep difficulties of the kind that we know about—depression, relationship breakdown, job losses, bankruptcy and suicide—these are things which I think do require a view from the boards of any organisation that has a connection to any faith. I suppose…

Wendy Carlisle: But they call themselves ‘Catholic Clubs’.

Paul O’Callaghan: Yes well, that might be something you’d like to ask then about.

Wendy Carlisle: One gambling addict that Background Briefing spoke to said he’d lost $200,000 at a big Sydney Catholic Club. He can’t quite understand how a club with poker and roulette machines can call itself a ‘Catholic Club’.

Saad: ‘Catholic’ you have to be like church or mosque or something good for people, not for gambling.

Wendy Carlisle: When the Catholic Clubs were originally granted registered club status they received generous tax concessions and income tax relief, the idea being that profits would be fed back into their communities. The Canberra Southern Cross Club was originally a Catholic club; it’s now being rebranded as a Christian Club. CEO, Greg Mitchell:

Greg Mitchell: Well, we’re a Christian Club based on those standards. There’s some core Christian standards on faith, love, justice and so forth, and that’s what we deal with. You know, it’s just Christian standards and that’s what we base our philosophy on.

(Church bells)

Wendy Carlisle: The marriage between the Catholic Clubs and the church has never been consecrated. John Turnbull from the Liverpool Catholic Club.

John Turnbull: The Catholic Church doesn’t own it.

Wendy Carlisle: What is the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Liverpool Catholic…

John Turnbull: Common interest. Common interest. A group of Catholic people have a common interest; that’s all.

Wendy Carlisle: Yet the church’s gambling taskforce…

John Turnbull: I can’t get into the Catholic side of it. I’m not a Catholic. I’m here to run a Catholic Club.

Wendy Carlisle: OK, but what I’m asking you is why do you think that the Catholic Church, through its representative groups, gambling taskforces, is so supportive of mandatory pre-commitment and the Catholic Clubs are not? Why is there this disconnect?

I can’t get into the Catholic side of it. I’m not a Catholic. I’m here to run a Catholic Club

John Turnbull, CEO, Liverpool Catholic Club

John Turnbull: It must be shocking! It’s a free country. You must have an opinion on this, I have an opinion, and I presume the Catholic Church has an opinion. But are we doing anything illegal? And are we making people do it? People who come here want to come here. It’s that’s unfortunate sight again; it’s a free country. People do make the choice to come and enjoy themselves on poker machines.

Wendy Carlisle: Along with drinking and sport, gambling is one of the great Australian pastimes. And for a small number of poker machine players—about two per cent—their gambling becomes pathological. These so-called problem gamblers provide clubs with 40 per cent of their gambling revenue. So when Julia Gillard cut a deal with Andrew Wilkie to form a minority government and in return promised to introduce mandatory pre-commitment, the clubs struck back with a highly effective $40-million ad campaign.

(Excerpt from ad: ‘No way! A licence to have a punt? It’s un-Australian.’ ‘I know. I mean, what’s next? They’ll be telling us how many beers to have next. Gillard would be crazy to back that, wouldn’t she?’)

Wendy Carlisle:Julia Gillard obviously agreed, and the Gambling Reform Bill was dead. And so with poker machine reform poleaxed by the clubs, the clubs have ramped up their own response to the problem gambling. They say they don’t want problem gamblers in their clubs and as part of this response the big Catholic Clubs have brought in Catholic Social Services Australia to help. It’s a million-dollar deal.

Paul O’Callaghan: This particular program involves a five-year framework for gambling awareness, intervention and support, and it’s a program that’s been agreed between Catholic Care Sydney and the Catholic Clubs of Liverpool, Lidcombe, Campbelltown and Hurstville and Menai.

Wendy Carlisle: All of these Catholic Clubs have put more poker machines into their venues in the past year, and they’re making more money out of them than ever before. At Club Central in Hurstville, 93 per cent of the club’s revenue comes from the poker machines—that’s $24-million. At Dooleys Club in Lidcombe, 80 per cent of the club’s revenue, or $44-million, comes from gambling, and we’ll post the details of this on our website. “Catholic club gaming revenues and poker machines” pdf

(Sound of poker machines)

The Australian Churches Gaming Taskforce, which was a leading force behind the Wilkie reforms, hasn’t given up on its plans to curb poker machines, but that will have to be left for another day. Paul O’Callaghan from Catholic Social Services Australia:

Paul O’Callaghan: The broader issue is, you know, what is needed to be able to make a substantive difference in respect of problem gambling on a national basis? And that won’t be solved by these kinds of programs.

Wendy Carlisle: The programs will help some people; that is, the small proportion of problem gamblers who seek professional help.

Paul O’Callaghan: To the extent that less people will commit suicide, less people will have family breakups, less people will lose their jobs, then I suppose this investment would be regarded as useful.

Wendy Carlisle: In the meantime, Paul O’Callaghan is philosophical. If there were sectarian reasons behind the establishment of the Catholic Clubs in the first place, opposition to poker machine reform has united the clubs like never before.

Paul O’Callaghan: As you know, the Catholic Clubs have been committed to the Clubs New South Wales and Clubs Australia campaign to defeat any proposed legislative reform, whereas the Catholic Church is one of a number of churches which has been actively promoting that reform. And I would mention that in particular the Catholic bishops last year were particularly commending the efforts by the federal government to pursue that reform agenda. They also called on the clubs associated with the church to lead the way in addressing problem poker machine gambling and asked them to give careful consideration to that proposed legislation.

(Music: ‘Viva Las Vegas’)

Wendy Carlisle: Sitting in a prime position on the main street of Lidcombe in Sydney’s west is Dooleys Catholic Club. It’s ranked the fourth most profitable in the state. Its membership has almost doubled to 55,000 in just the last few years, and that’s because the club sits smack bang in the corridor of the fastest growing region in the city.

Dooleys has come a long way from its white-bread Catholic origins. There are now dozens of nationalities joining the club in droves. Battling a sore throat, CEO David Mantle pointed out a mural next to the boardroom which was a pictorial history of the club.

David Mantle: Pictorial history of sort of we have Lidcombe, which we’ve got to update and we’ll be updating that shortly.

Wendy Carlisle: And are there key figures here in the Catholic Club’s history?

David Mantle: Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Father Lloyd is the… he was the guy who was completely instrumental in founding the club.

Wendy Carlisle: And what were his sort of ideals? What was the principle…?

David Mantle: Around the provision of a social venue for young Catholic men.

Wendy Carlisle: And why was that considered necessary?

David Mantle: I think a lot of it comes back to the old days going back to some of the licensing restrictions around pubs, the limitations around pubs as well. And that’s when a lot of the clubs started to come to formation around that time.

Wendy Carlisle: So that’s why it was called ‘The Lidcombe Catholic Workmen’s Club’…

David Mantle: It was, yes.

Wendy Carlisle: …back in those days.

David Mantle: It was one of the original very, very early licences. And in the region, when licences were being applied for, I believe we were the first club in the area to get one. And they believed—it was always going to be a Catholic Club—and they believed by being a Catholic Workmen’s Club that that would enhance the opportunity of getting a licence.

Wendy Carlisle: These days, it’s not the liquor licences that are driving club revenue, but the poker machines. The original idea of licencing the Catholic Clubs and granting them generous tax concessions was that they would feed their profits back into their communities. A small fraction of poker machine revenue does go back into the community, but even the Productivity Commission has questioned the transparency and efficiency of this funding mechanism and so too has a report from the Uniting Care Australia[i] Nevertheless, Dooleys, like many of the Catholic Clubs, has reinvested millions back into club infrastructure—car parks, gaming rooms and restaurants.

David Mantle: And we have a very, very successful food operation, very high quality. It’s something we focus on phenomenally, not just down here but also the noodle house upstairs; that’s a fairly significant driver of the foot traffic.

Wendy Carlisle: After the lunchtime rush hour when Background Briefing visited, the restaurant was nearly empty. But next door, the gaming room was doing a roaring trade.

(To David Mantle) So now we’re coming to where all the pokies are, and how many pokies have you got?

David Mantle: We’ve got 361 at the moment.

(Sound of poker machines and patrons)

Wendy Carlisle: It’s certainly the busiest part of the club.

David Mantle: It is. Yeah, there’s no disputing that. This would be a normal day.

Wendy Carlisle: So, what, we are at 3 o’clock in the afternoon; you’ve got close to 400 poker machines and it’s very, very busy in here.

David Mantle: It’s a bustling area. It’s a very busy area. There’s no disputing that.

Wendy Carlisle: David Mantle says his club is in talks with the poker machine manufacturer to trial voluntary pre-commitment. This way, people could set their own limits, but there’s no time-line for that. Meantime, it’s at Dooleys, where a problem gambler, who wants to be known by his first name, Saad, lost several hundred thousand dollars. Background Briefing met him at the Arabic Council, where he’d finally gone for help.

Saad: Gambling had broke my life—everything. I lost my wife—first one—I lost my house, you know? I lost first job. I sell my car. Everything.

Wendy Carlisle: Saad had been an out-of-control gambler for years. He didn’t just go to Dooleys but also lost a lot of money at the Panthers and the Bulldogs, two other big Sydney clubs. He came to believe that poker machines at those clubs were rigged against the player, so when his friends started going to Dooleys, so did he. The way Saad tells it, the fact that there were so many people on the gaming floor meant they had to be winning.

Saad: When I go inside I see too many people—even Lebanese, Chinese—you know what I mean? Heaps, like, people inside, even in the weekend. I think maybe this club give something; the people win.

Wendy Carlisle: Another attraction was the service. Saad and his wife received complimentary drinks just by pushing a button on the poker machine.

Saad: And service was good in Dooleys. Like, when you press you need a drink, straightaway people come, a free drink…

Wendy Carlisle: At Dooleys it’s free?

Saad: Yeah, free.

Wendy Carlisle: And why does that make a difference?

Saad: Already, like, the people losing money and still you have to pay for soft drink, or… you know what I mean? You have to in a club you give for people.

Wendy Carlisle: So what is it about getting free drinks that is enticing?

Saad: Better than the other club, you know what I mean? If I need a drink for me and for my wife, my friend and his wife, $15 easy. You just, you press service, someone comes, five minutes—ready, everything.

Wendy Carlisle: Saad exhibited the classic signs of a problem gambler. He became aggressive and argumentative when he lost.

Wendy Carlisle: On one occasion he punched the poker machine, breaking his finger. Sitting in on our interview was Saad’s gambling counsellor from the Arabic Council, Heshmat Shuhid, who is assisting with the translation.

(Men speaking in Arabic)

Heshmat Shahid: He break his finger because he start hitting, punching the machine like punching a person in front of you. He’s punching the machine, ‘I want to get my money back.’ He breaks one of his fingers.

Wendy Carlisle:Did you get thrown out of the club?

Saad: No.

He’s punching the machine, ‘I want to get my money back.

Heshmat Shahid, gambling counsellor

Wendy Carlisle: They didn’t say to you, ‘You can’t come back’?

Saad: No. They would say ‘Don’t do it,’ like security. ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘I don’t care. Kick me out if you want.’

Wendy Carlisle: And they didn’t kick you out?

Saad: No, because you know I give… like, my money I give him his wages and for supervisor. When I lose $5000 a night, or $6000, I pay for supervisor and I pay for workers. I pay for everything—even for tax office—’cos good customer.

Wendy Carlisle: Like the rest of the club industry, the Catholic Clubs dispute the key facts about problem gambling. They say there’s no way that 40 per cent of their gaming revenue comes from problem gamblers and they say that there’s nothing intrinsically addictive about poker machines. It’s obviously a fundamental point of difference. Lidcombe Catholic Club CEO, David Mantle, sums it up this way:

David Mantle: There’s no disputing that the welfare agencies will have a different view to us, because they’re coming from a different perspective, they might have certain information that we don’t. But we need to be talking to these people, not fighting with them.

David Mantle: No look, the reality is, I think—and again I won’t talk on behalf of the industry—if we can come up with some solutions that are proven to work and they’ve got some form of impact on our business, then we’ve got to be seriously looking at it and we’ve got to buy into it, otherwise we will be seen as totally self-centred. At the end of the day, yes we do run businesses, but we run community clubs and for us it’s a matter of balancing out the objective of being a business with what our objects are for our reason for being.

Wendy Carlisle: But if 40 per cent of the gaming revenue of this club is coming from problem gamblers, what are the ethical issues that the Catholic Club faces around that and what have you said? What is the discussion? I mean, here we are sitting in the boardroom; what are the conversations in this boardroom about that very question?

David Mantle: Well, a couple of things. What are we doing to be part of the solution—that’s the main one. Certainly that’s been one of my focuses: what are we doing to lessen our reliance on it for if and when that time comes? I think it’s probably likely that at some stage there will be some change. What form that change takes I really don’t know.

Wendy Carlisle: But what are your board members saying about the prospect that 40 per cent of the gaming revenue of this club comes from problem gamblers? Surely people must talk about that.

David Mantle: Well, we can’t quantify that. I mean, that’s…

Wendy Carlisle: But that’s what the Productivity Commission say. That’s their best estimate. That’s what the evidence is now saying; in fact, that’s what your partners in Catholic Social Services Sydney are saying.

David Mantle: If they can help us identify who those people are, then we can start working towards a solution.

(Excerpt from ‘Part of the Solution’ campaign: ‘Thousands of local clubs across Australia are working hard to reduce problem gambling even further. That’s why your local club offers access to 24-7 counselling, bans betting with credit cards, has trained staff in responsible gambling, plus we’re building better self-exclusion programs. And we’ll keep working to find ways to help, because clubs are part of the solution. For more information, visit partofthesolution.com.au. Authorised by A. Ball, Clubs Australia, Sydney’)

Wendy Carlisle: The Clubs Australia campaign wants problem gamblers to come forward for help. The trouble with that is that people in the grip of a gambling addiction don’t want help; they just want to keep playing until they win. The A. Ball who authorised the Clubs Australia campaign is Anthony Ball.

Anthony Ball: People can actually coexist with poker machines. It does happen. The 40 per cent number; look, it is a rubbish number, and there has actually been a lot of work done since then that shows that it’s not 40 per cent, it can’t be.

Wendy Carlisle: What do you think it is?

Anthony Ball: We think it’s closer to ten. We think it’s closer to ten, but we still think that’s too much. But when people say that half of club money comes from problem gamblers, it’s wrong. It is absolutely wrong.

Wendy Carlisle: But the Productivity Commission chairman, Gary Banks, has accused Clubs Australia of egregious misuse of data by asserting the numbers such as you’re stating.

Anthony Ball: Oh look, I’d question his organisation’s use of the very poor data that they had in the first place and I’ll back my people in against his.

Wendy Carlisle: According to one of Australia’s leading gambling researchers, Dr Paul Delfabbro, who writes the Australasian Gambling Review, which is a survey of gambling research, the Productivity Commission estimate is close to the mark.

Paul Delfabbro: The commission was very sensible in being fairly conservative about their statement. I think the advantage of the commission’s approach is that they did take a lot of different studies into account and they tried to converge their estimates across a whole range of different studies. The commission has got a larger body of evidence which they’ve used to converge their estimates, whereas these other single one-off industry studies don’t have that sort of level of evidence.

So my view is the commission’s methodology was the best available, but there are certainly limitations to it. I think further research does need to be done to refine it in a more robust way. But I think their estimate of 40 per cent probably has a reasonable face validity.

Wendy Carlisle: It’s not hard to see why the Catholic Clubs have fought the research that suggests poker machines exploit the most vulnerable, or that 40 per cent of their gaming revenue comes from people who’ve got a problem with the pokies, for that goes to the heart of the Catholic Clubs’ mission of assisting the poor and needy.

Liverpool Catholic Club in Sydney’s west is located in an enormous compound. Its 55,000 members enjoy bars, restaurants and lounges. They’ve got a squash court and the club maintains the council’s sporting fields. The club also has 401 poker machines, which generate $28-million a year. The club’s CEO, John Turnbull, says there’s no way that 40 per cent of that comes from problem gamblers.

John Turnbull: Well, I can’t see how that happens here, because it’s members only and we only permit the members coming in.

Wendy Carlisle: Is there any reason to believe that members have any less of a problem with gambling than those identified by the Productivity Commission?

John Turnbull: Yes, because we know them. It is not open to the general public. I think you’ll find that most of this problem gambling is connected very much not in the club industry but into the hotel industry, where they have the open door policy.

Wendy Carlisle: As far as John Turnbull is concerned, the clubs are doing everything they can to help problem gamblers. If pressed to come up with an estimate of how many problem gamblers there would be in his club, he does have a number in mind.

John Turnbull: We would have a few. How we handle them, I don’t know if the system is correct at the moment. I’m sure the Clubs New South Wales, with their advertising, the advertising throughout the industry, to allow these people to come forward and for assistance, and that’s what we wish to do if they’re there. But no, we haven’t had more than eight people speak to us this year in this club.

Wendy Carlisle: About their gambling problems?

John Turnbull: Yeah.

Wendy Carlisle: And you think that’s indicative of the level of problem that you’ve got here, eight people?

John Turnbull: At the moment, yes.

Wendy Carlisle: The claim that membership creates a safety buffer against the influx of problem gamblers doesn’t wash with Catholic Social Services Australia. Paul O’Callaghan says he’s seen no evidence to support this assertion.

Paul O’Callaghan: As far as the Australian Churches Gambling Taskforce is concerned, we would be very keen to see any evidence about how clubs that have at least an affiliation with the church would have a different outcome than all other clubs.

(Noise from gaming floor)

Wendy Carlisle: Poker machines are carefully designed to be attractive and there’ve been reports recently asserting psychologists are used by poker machine manufacturers to design the games. The industry denies this. Nevertheless, a leading gambling researcher, Dr Charles Livingstone, says there are basic psychological principles underpinning poker machine design.

Charles Livingstone: The machines themselves are very colourful, they have all sorts of imagery on them which is thought to appeal to certain types of people. You know, you have Native American themes, you have wild west themes, you have popular film and TV programs, you have Elvis machines—you have all this iconography which is focussed on appealing to people’s emotional reaction. And so, for example, you’ll often go to a gaming room and you will see people who stroke the nose on the little dolphin or who have some sort of emotional engagement at that level with the machine. And you know, even late at night in some venues I’ve seen people embrace machines.

Anthony Ball: I don’t think anyone really knows why people become problem gamblers. What I do know is that it’s very easy to blame it on a poker machine.

Wendy Carlisle: Well, how much of it is to do with the poker machine, do you think?

Anthony Ball: Well look, I think very little. I think mostly it is about people who are either predisposed to it or are having issues in their life. But that doesn’t in any way diminish their problems that they face. We just don’t know enough about it to put our finger straight on why people become problem gamblers, and anyone who tells you that they know that the machines are creating the problem, they really don’t know.

Wendy Carlisle: Can I just read to you what the Productivity Commission says?

Anthony Ball: Sure.

Wendy Carlisle: They say that ‘the problems experienced by gamblers… are as much a consequence of the technology of the games, the accessibility and the nature and the conduct of venues, as they are a consequence of the [gamblers] themselves.’ You obviously don’t agree with that.

Anthony Ball: No, I don’t. I don’t, as a statement. And, you know, they go on to try and explain why that’s the case, and no we don’t agree that the machines themselves are unsafe. And we know that because most people play them perfectly OK.

(Poker machine noise)

Wendy Carlisle: Is it a useful distinction, do you think, when people say, ‘Well look, it’s not the machine that’s causing the addiction, it’s people.’

Gary Hatcliffe: It is the machine. It is the machine.

Wendy Carlisle: That’s Gary Hatcliffe, a former teacher. Over the last 20 years, he’s lost a small fortune—most of it on the poker machines—and he’s thought a lot about what keeps him playing.

Gary Hatcliffe: Basically, it’s a combination of the bells and the whistles and the small wins. It was basically to be in a zone and it’s been explained to me that before each press of the button—because I would always play maximum credits—before the press of each button, there would be a surge of adrenalin or dopamine going through my body and that expectation that the next press was actually going to be a jackpot.

Wendy Carlisle: Poker machines are programmed to win. It’s not a game of strategy; in fact, it’s pure luck if you get a jackpot, because poker machines are designed to ensure the player is the loser and the club is the winner.

Charles Livingstone: The thing to point out is that poker machines rely on two well-established psychological principles. The first of those is called ‘operant conditioning’. This was established by B.F. Skinner and his colleagues in the 1950s and what it demonstrates is that humans, along with all other mammals, will respond to intermittent unpredictable but relatively regular rewards. So if you’re sitting there tapping a bar or a button and you get a reward every second time you tap it, that’s not very interesting, but if you tap it and you get a reward after five taps and then another reward after six taps and then you wait ten, then you get a reward, and those rewards vary in scale, that is very effective at establishing a habit.

Charles Livingstone: Absolutely. That’s exactly what they do. Skinner actually said that the poker machine, or the slot machine as he called it, was the perfect conditioning machine.

The other established principle they rely on is called ‘classical conditioning’. That’s the sort of the sound of the bell thing. Where you… you know, if you feed your dog and ring a bell at the same time, then eventually if you just ring the bell the dog will start salivating in anticipation. And so if you look at a poker machine, every time you get a little win the thing goes off like it’s cracker night, as we used to say. And that reinforces the fact that you’ve just had a win.

(Poker machine noise)

Wendy Carlisle: With all the attention on the harms connected with poker machines, Clubs Australia has started to roll out a voluntary self-exclusion program, which allows gamblers to ban themselves from clubs. We’ll hear more about that in a minute. But self-banning has been around for at least a decade. It was first initiated by Paul Symond in Sydney, who provided a self-exclusion service to some of the biggest clubs in New South Wales. In the past ten years, Paul Symond says 1500 gamblers have banned themselves from clubs. He says that when he proposed the idea that people should be able to ban themselves, the clubs were initially reluctant to buy into it. But then he explained to them a few facts and they embraced it. Paul Symond:

Paul Symond: Most importantly, their money hasn’t dropped, their profits haven’t dropped: nothing’s changed. What’s changed is we’re saving lives. And this is why I don’t understand why the gambling industry is so scared of it, or a proportion of the gambling industry, because you will always get the money out of the gambler. We generally don’t get them before they hit rock bottom.

Wendy Carlisle: So your service is no threat to the business model, if you like.

Paul Symond: Absolutely none. Absolutely none.

Wendy Carlisle: What you’re saying to me is that the clubs actually are worried that it will affect the bottom line.

Paul Symond: Yeah, absolutely.

Wendy Carlisle: What do they say to you?

Paul Symond: Well, if I just get back to that first presentation I gave to the clubs, they didn’t ask me. And I said, ‘Why haven’t you asked me the most important question?’ And they all sort of looked at each other and, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Aren’t you going to ask me is this going to affect your bottom line?’ And then they said, ‘Well, you know, I was embarrassed,’ they didn’t want to ask it. So I said, ‘The answer’s no.’

Wendy Carlisle: And what did you observe about the room when you said that?

Paul Symond: Well, they were smiling. Because they knew it’s obviously something that they’ve got to take into account, because they’re answerable to the board and if there was a drop of, say, 10 or 20 per cent I’d say their jobs are on the line.

(Poker machine noise)

Wendy Carlisle: It’s taken another decade for the rest of the clubs, through the peak industry body Clubs Australia, to embrace the idea of voluntary self-exclusion.

Rowan Cameron: They can also choose whether it’s the entire club that they ban themselves from, the gaming area, or—a third option here—a total gambling ban, which would take in Kino and the TAB as well.

Wendy Carlisle: Rowan Cameron from Clubs Australia has been rolling out the technology at clubs in the west of New South Wales, and so far 300 gamblers have banned themselves from clubs.

Rowan Cameron: Up until recent years, if a person admitting that they had destructive gambling was looking to use what is a primitive yet effective tool of self-exclusion, they would have to go round and visit each venue individually in order that they could achieve the safety net around where it is that they live and work and socialise.

Wendy Carlisle: In coming months, voluntary self-exclusion will be introduced into every club in the state.

Rowan Cameron: So we’re offering the problem gambler the means by which they can go into the club of their choice or to their local funded gambling counselling service, they can supply some basic information, they can through a process of negotiation choose the venues that they need and the nature of the ban that occurs in each individual venue, and then the system automatically disseminates their deed and photographic identifying images out to each of the nominated venues. So it’s a much quicker, more efficient and I think respectful way to allow people to access this quite useful tool.

Charles Livingstone: Well, in my opinion it’s not going to affect it at all and that’s why I think they’re promoting it, because they know that it’s not really going to be effective.

Wendy Carlisle: Dr Livingstone says the proof that harm minimisation works would be that gaming revenues would come down.

Charles Livingstone: If you had an effective harm minimisation regime in place, one which prevented people with a gambling problem from gambling to excess, then there was no doubt that that would have an impact on the bottom line of the industry, and presumably that’s why they fought it so hard. What the gambling industry, however, has proposed is a continuation of existing policies and the promotion… just as the alcohol industry and indeed the tobacco industry before it advocated for measures which essentially focussed on individual responsibility but didn’t address the core issues which created the problem in the first place, so the gambling industry is doing that as well. And it’s saying, ‘Well, what we need to do is identify problem gamblers and get them out of the venues,’ but most problem gamblers operate in denial or in subterfuge for many, many months if not years before they will admit to having a serious problem, by which time much of the damage is done.

Effectively most people who end up in counselling end up there because they’ve hit rock bottom and they haven’t got any credit cards left, their family has left them, they’ve lost their house, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, typically that’s when people seek help and unfortunately the gambling industry is promoting more of the same.

Wendy Carlisle: That’s not the way Anthony Ball from Clubs Australia sees it. Harm minimisation might hit club revenues, but he says the clubs aren’t worried about that.

Anthony Ball: We’re not that concerned about it. I mean, our concern still first and foremost is…

Anthony Ball: Oh no, well, in the context of helping people with a problem, our focus is to actually help those people and revenue is very much a secondary consideration. So the revenue piece is often thrown up, but quite frankly, when it comes to helping people with problems, it’s irrelevant.

Wendy Carlisle: Well, give me an estimate of what you think would happen to clubs’ bottom lines if your harm minimisation policies were effective.

Anthony Ball: Oh, they’d probably improve over time, because as businesses we would be more…

Wendy Carlisle: People would spend more money on pokies?

Anthony Ball: No, but we would have… We don’t want people with really bad problems in our clubs; we want people who spend money recreationally well within their limits. We see this as part of our industry’s sustainability, so we’re not thinking about tomorrow or the next day; we’re thinking about clubs being reinforced as the safest places to go and have a punt.

Wendy Carlisle: Someone who used to love having a punt is Gary Hatcliffe. He lives in Canberra at a halfway house for those with gambling problems. He says he dropped a lot of money into the poker machines at the Canberra Southern Cross Club. So when Gary decided to set up a new Gamblers Anonymous group, he wanted to see if he could put up a notice at his old stomping ground.

Gary Hatcliffe: I, um, was starting up a new Gamblers Anonymous in Canberra, because at the time there were only two meetings, whereas for instance if I was an alcoholic there were something like 34 meetings or something in Canberra. And what I was doing before the first meeting actually got together was I had made some A4 flyers to attract people who were still suffering from their compulsions to gamble. And I put flyers up in the police station, at the library, in community centres and community noticeboards. And I was walking past the Southern Cross Club and I thought—because I knew that there was an internal noticeboard, for instance that the fishing club could put up information about what’s going on or where they were going to go next, for instance.

So I walked into the club with my flyers and showed the receptionist at the front there exactly what the flyer was and I asked if I could just put it up on the internal noticeboard. And she took the flyer to see the manager and she came back and said, ‘I’ve been told to tell you that no, you cannot put the flyer up and no, you cannot come into the club.’

Wendy Carlisle: And was there a reason given to you?

Gary Hatcliffe: No, no. There was no reason. I asked why and she said, ‘It’s just company policy. Company policy.’

Wendy Carlisle: Gary Hatcliffe was pretty upset about it.

Gary Hatcliffe: Just how obscene it was that a Christian Club was basically not concerned with me putting up a piece of paper which just… again, I was just hoping to attract people who were suffering.

Wendy Carlisle: Background Briefing put in a call to the Canberra Southern Cross Club and spoke to its CEO, Greg Mitchell, for his side of the story.

Greg Mitchell: The man came in and obviously our staff, according to the club’s policy, advised the gentleman that any external advertising wasn’t allowed to be put up within our clubs.

Wendy Carlisle: It was a notice for a Gambling Anonymous meeting.

Greg Mitchell: The staff have a policy and that still fits the definition of external advertising.

Wendy Carlisle: So what is it that you’re allowed to put on a community noticeboard, then?

Greg Mitchell: Well, matter of fact we don’t have in any of our venues community noticeboards at all.

Wendy Carlisle: Well, we’ve rung the club and have been told that you do have a community noticeboard.

Wendy Carlisle: The Southern Cross Club provides a range of services for problem gamblers.

Greg Mitchell: We provide a lot of information, we have staff education programs, we have self-exclusion programs, we have voluntary exclusion programs, all that are part of the program that’s supplied by Mission Australia.

Wendy Carlisle: And how many people are voluntarily self-excluding from your club?

Greg Mitchell: At last count there was about six.

Wendy Carlisle: It’s not very many is it?

Greg Mitchell: No, it’s not very many. Well, not very many, not very many at all.

Wendy Carlisle: Does that indicate, do you think, that voluntary self-exclusion is of limited value in helping those people who are in the grip of their gambling addiction, do you think?

Greg Mitchell: Look, I’m not an expert in this regard, but I think that any opportunity where people have the ability to self-exclude themselves voluntarily is a step in the right direction. And if helping those problem gamblers affects our revenue, well, so be it.

Wendy Carlisle: Last year, gamblers lost $26-million on the poker machines at the Canberra Southern Cross Club. The club says it gave back to the community $600,000 in cash grants and another million in in-kind donations. But the club’s annual report also discloses that it spent double that on gambling promotions and marketing.

(To Greg Mitchell) Does it indicate an absence of priority for the clubs when it spends more on gambling promotions than it does on community donations?

Greg Mitchell: No, I don’t think so at all.

Wendy Carlisle: You spent $2.1-million on gambling promotions and there’s an extra $1.3-million on marketing for the club. That far outstrips the community donations.

Greg Mitchell: Yes, but in a business sense you need to spend some sort of money to generate the revenue to make sufficient funds that we can actually make that contribution back to the community.

(Music)

Wendy Carlisle: All of the Catholic Clubs spoken to for this program said they were trying to broaden their revenue bases away from the poker machines, but the club records and government data shows they’re putting in more poker machines and making more money from them. At Catholic Social Services Australia, Paul O’Callaghan says the Catholic and Christian Clubs have got some soul-searching to do.

Paul O’Callaghan: Well, they existed before poker machines came into play, so I don’t think there’s an existential problem for clubs. But there is a real question of the alignment of mission, if you like, and to the extent that they do have an ongoing connection with some of those core principles from the Catholic faith—you know, I’m thinking of things here like the dignity and respect for human life, trying to influence their communities in a positive way and promoting the common good—these are some of the principles, for example, from Catholic social teaching which have been very important over many, many decades.

(Church bells)

Wendy Carlisle: Background Briefing’s coordinating producer this week is Leila Shunnar. Research by Anna Whitfeld. Technical production also by Leila Shunnar. The executive producer is Chris Bullock and I’m Wendy Carlisle.

[i] The original broadcast incorrectly stated this was a report from the Combined Churches Gambling Taskforce.